


Imprint

by downjune



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dream Sharing, F/M, Gen, Infinity Gems, Magical Pregnancy, Mpreg, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Some Handwaving, space adventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 19:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20569622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downjune/pseuds/downjune
Summary: “Okay, I don’t know how it works on your planet, Blue, but where I come from, dudes do not do the gestating. Therefore, I can’t be pregnant.”





	Imprint

“I’m not pregnant.”

“Clearly, you are.”

“Okay, I don’t know how it works on your planet, Blue, but where I come from, dudes do not do the gestating. Therefore, I can’t be pregnant.”

If Tony said it enough times, it’d be true. Because that always worked. If he didn’t look down at his stomach, it was just a normal 44-year-old stomach. Not as trim as it could be, but not flabby, and certainly not occupied by… 

It was Schrodinger’s belly—either his own body, or something entirely alien, as long as he didn’t—

Shit, he looked. 

Memories of the kid freaking out about aliens implanting babies in him echoed between his ears, and he shut his eyes. The kid was gone. Dr. Wizard was gone. Everybody but this mean/kind, scary/gentle cyborg lady was gone. And no amount of denial could change that.

They were on their own, and they were screwed. And he was knocked up. 

Sort of. Probably?

If babies were made of light and a heartbeat so strong, he could feel it in his fingertips. If babies gave him celestial dreams about the birth and death of stars billions of years apart and happening simultaneously.

If babies were made when a wizard looked him dead in the eye and used an Infinity gem to undo the mortal gut wound Thanos had given him. That wizard had left something else in its place before he’d handed the stone over to Thanos, but Tony hadn’t noticed until the literal dust had settled, and he and Nebula were limping to the nearest planet for repairs and refueling. That was three months ago, and this thing was definitely changing. Its pulse was louder, and his dreams were more focused, even if the shape of his stomach hadn’t changed all that much.

“We should stay longer on this world,” Nebula said in her fierce monotone. “The capital city on the southern continent is known throughout the quadrant for its healers. They will be able to help you.”

Tony shook his head and pulled his shirt back down over his stomach. He glowed in two places now—the arc reactor, and the…whatever it was down there. “Granted, my eyes are opened to the breathtaking diversity of the galaxy, but I feel pretty confident no OBGYN has seen a Time stone baby. Not to mention, half their healers are dust, so we have no idea what we’d be getting ourselves into. I’ll take my chances with you, Blue.”

She blinked her beetle-black eyes at him and hesitated. “That’s idiotic. You have no reason to believe I can see you through this.”

“We’ve been road-tripping—space-tripping sounds like a drug thing, right? Yeah. We’ve been road-tripping for months, and you haven’t shot me out an airlock yet for angsting at you.”

“Your skillsets are useful.”

“We got our supplies, and nobody even tried to sell me to a rare creatures collector this time.”

“Because I accompanied you everywhere like a nanny.”

“Right, see? So accompany me the hell off this planet and let’s hit the road. I’ve _gotta_ get home, and you’re doing great as my nanny.”

Nebula jerked her chin at his glowing stomach. “You may not make it home.” When they ventured off the ship for supply runs and parts scavenging, he managed to mostly smother the pulsing light with a jacket that had apparently belonged to Quill, but here in the relative safety of the docked ship, it cast the cockpit in dim, flickering gold. Not just louder, then, but brighter. 

“All right, try to care a little less than a nanny would about what happens to me and just get us out of here. Whattya say?” He lifted his hands in supplication. 

Her mouth thinned, and if Tony had given more of a fuck, he would’ve felt bad for putting another woman in a position where she had to either look out for him or dump his ass. But he really needed to get to earth where the other woman in his life might or might not be waiting for him. Pepper, if she hadn’t been dusted, had to still have hope. That’s what she did with him. Carried deep reserves of hope and faith. And if she ran out, she only needed a few months to recharge. He’d get there in time. He would get there.

And they would, what, raise this whatever-it-was as a family? Name it Morgan, for the eccentric uncle? Sure. This wouldn’t put her over the top. Again.

He sucked in a breath and shook himself out of his thoughts. Nebula had taken her seat in the captain’s chair, so he buckled in as her co-pilot. And, okay, he did give a fuck.

“Sorry, uh. About the nanny comments,” he said. “Uncalled for.”

She slid him a look that, a few weeks ago, he would have labeled unreadable, but he now knew meant, _Whatever, I know you’re a baby. _

“Football later? I need a rematch.”

Her mouth twitched, and she nodded. “Yes, you do.”

*

He dreamed in loops. Sometimes about stars, sometimes the life cycle of a moth. Beginning and ending and beginning. His parents’ murder. Pepper burning with Extremis. Losing the kid. 

Carrying a nuke on his back through a hole in space, high enough that he passed out, and came to over the ocean on an intercept course with the missile. He carried it above Manhattan and flew it up into the sky, through a hole in space, shivering with cold even as sweat dampened his chest, high enough that he passed out, and on and on and on. 

His past, his present, and fuck, maybe his future, all of life, infinitely accessible and inescapable. His pulse pounded, and he burned up from the inside like this thing in him was itself a star. He awoke drenched in sweat, exhausted, Nebula sitting nearby, her face flickering with the light from his belly. 

He wished he dreamed of the moment Strange undid his wound and left this in its place. He’d have liked all the angles on that one. But his dreams stayed clear of this thing’s origins. It pulsed and grew in him and dreamed with him but didn’t repeat its beginning. Maybe it didn’t know to look for its own beginning. 

But that implied that a twelve-week-old—Infinity baby? Time Lord? Creature from the void?—was curating Tony’s dreams, and that was insane.

Now, he walked with Natasha and Clint up a steep, snowy mountain. Her hair was longer, a mix of blonde and her true red, and she practically glowed with purpose as she flung herself off a rocky, icy cliff. The bitter wind stole Tony’s shout as he instinctively followed her over, his voice left behind as he plummeted with her. She stared at him, eyes wide with confusion, but before they broke themselves at the bottom of the cliff, he blinked and they were back at the start. Staring up at that terrible black mountain. 

Cool, dry hands clasped his and, in a flash of light, Natasha and Clint disappeared to be replaced by Thanos and a woman he’d never seen before—tall and slim with vibrant green skin and hair a few shades darker than Nat’s. He watched their conversation with a sick pit in his stomach. He knew how this story would end. He hated this story. 

Thanos threw the woman from the edge of the cliff, and a raw cry ripped from—not his throat. 

He snapped awake to find Nebula seated by his bunk, slumped against the edge of it, both hands clasped in his.

“Blue,” he croaked, throat parched, “the hell are you doing?”

It took her a minute to come around, the smooth skin of her brow twitching the only sign. “You were louder than normal. I couldn’t sleep.”

“I didn’t think you ever slept.”

“Because you’re so loud,” she gritted, pushing upright. Her hands stayed clasped in his. “What the hell was that?”

“What d’you mean? That was a nightmare, garden variety.”

“No, that was my sister, Gamora.” Her voice went even more ragged. “I knew he murdered her, but I didn’t—how did you—”

Tony shoved upright in his bunk, though it seemed vital he keep at least one hand on Nebula’s skin, so he did that, too. “Hold the phone. You saw that? You saw Thanos throw you sister off the cliff.”

“Just now, yes. And what is that infernal pounding?” She pressed her mechanical hand to her head.

“Oh, boy.” With his free hand, Tony tugged up his shirt to find his stomach flickering wildly, Strange’s Time stone baby—and he should really settle on some clever acronym for it—lit up with what felt like… joy. “I think… you may have just introduced yourself as mama duck. Papa duck? Auntie Duck.”

“Duck?” she asked with the familiar frustration of an alien who hadn’t yet learned all his euphemisms. 

“I think you imprinted on it. Like a duck. They do that, right?”

She was staring at his stomach, which she did a lot, but this time, she pulled her flesh hand free of his and touched the slight swell of his lower abdomen. His stomach muscles tightened by reflex, and she glanced sharply up at him when he sucked in a short breath. 

She looked at him like she’d done something terrible and expected immediate punishment. Just as quickly, though, that look vanished behind her usual fierce expression. She wasn’t afraid of him. Tony was no threat to her. 

Or, he hadn’t been.

“I’m sorry; I don’t know how to—un-imprint,” she said. But she hadn’t moved her hand, so Tony covered it with his own. 

Recognition and, yup, joy surged through him, terrifying in its intensity, and Nebula made a sound too, mingled unease and happiness. And Tony had gotten way better at reading her these last several weeks, but he was far too self-obsessed to be _this_ good.

“You may have imprinted on me, too,” he said. 

That got her to snatch her hand away, her face closing off completely. Shoving to her feet, she turned and stalked out, but to Tony, it looked more like she was escaping. Probably a solid instinct.

One hand still curled over his middle, he covered his face with the other. “Great. It was the duck thing, wasn’t it.” He exhaled a sigh. “And now I’m talking to the maybe-baby.”

*

His internal clock had mostly adjusted to the perpetual night of outer space, so he gave Nebula until close to his bedtime before tracking her down. He found her in the captain’s chair, staring out at the stars as they moved sluggishly by. They were still so far from home. 

“Sorry about the duck thing,” he tried. “It was a reach. And just a guess, anyway.”

Without turning to look at him, she said, “I can still hear it.”

Tony shrugged. So, he’d made a good guess. “You’ll get used to it? Or maybe it’ll stop. It’s not like I know what the fuck is going on or anything.”

“How did it know to show me that? Vormir and Gamora and our father.”

Tony sank down into the co-pilot chair. “Blue, we’re so far off any map I’ve ever used to organize my life, all I’ve got at this point is a mother’s intuition.”

She finally glanced over at him, expression as serious as he’d ever seen it. “What is it telling you?”

He looked down at his belly, flickering gently through his shirt. “Strange told us he’d found one way through to the other side of this. One in 14 million. Whatever he did to me, he did it on purpose. I don’t know what all a Time stone does to a human body, but I think what’s in me—it’s learning. About us. About time.”

She stared at him for another long moment before looking out at the stars again. “There is nothing good a child can learn from me.”

He nodded, accepting that at face value. In the time they’d spent aboard the Benatar, she’d told him very little of her upbringing, but he recognized the way she instinctively reached for kindness, then smacked it away the moment she realized what she was doing. 

Howard Stark was no Thanos, clearly, but neither were particularly generous with affection or easy to please, as fathers went. 

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But I’m not sure this will actually be a kid when it’s done cooking, so. There’s that to consider. Also, I think it likes you. Also, also, this little glow stick might be the key to bringing back everybody Thanos stole from us. Including your sister.”

_Also, I think you're great_, he couldn’t quite bring himself to say. No need to jinx the relationship this early in the game with so much more at stake. 

She held perfectly still in her chair a moment before she pressed out of it and crossed to his. Then, looking at his belly rather than him, she knelt down at his feet. Finally, she darted a look his way as she lifted her flesh hand and carefully pressed it to his stomach again. 

Recognition leapt between them, and Tony clenched his hand on the armrest of the chair at the strangeness of everything in his life. 

“Perhaps she was bored with you and wanted more company.”

“She?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, she has all the time in the universe at her tiny fingertips, if the dreams I’ve been having are anything to go by, so—”

“That was your universe. Now she can have mine, so she will learn to be better than I ever was.” Nebula sounded downright hopeful at this possibility, bittersweet as it was. 

And for the first time since… probably since Thanos had run him through with Tony’s own blade, he felt a spark of optimism kindle behind his ribs. It settled in to wait with the mystery bundle taking shape in his belly.


End file.
